| |
| |
|
Sales Information |
|
|
|
Sealing The Deal Over The Business Meal
Doing business over meals is a ritual that has existed for centuries. Taking clients to breakfast, lunch or dinner has long been an effective way to build relationships, make the sale or seal the deal. These business meals are essentially business meetings. Knowledge of your product or your service is crucial to the success of the meeting, but so are your manners. Too many people jeopardize an opportunity because they fail to use good dining etiquette. Here are a few basic rules to make the experience pleasurable and profitable. Know your duties as the host. You are in charge. It is up to you to see that things go well and that your guests are comfortable. You need to attend to every detail from extending the invitation to paying the bill. Plan ahead when you issue the invitation. Allow a week for a business dinner and three days for lunch. Be certain that the date works for you. That might sound obvious, but if you have to cancel or postpone, you can look disorganized and disrespectful of your clients' time. Select a restaurant that you know, preferably one where you are known. This is no time to try out the latest hot spot. Being confident of the quality of the food and service leaves you free to focus on business. Consider the atmosphere. Does it lend itself to conversation and discussion? If you and your clients can't hear each other over the roar of the diners and dishes, you will have wasted your time and money. When you make your reservation, let the staff know that you will be dining with clients. If your guests suggest a restaurant new to you (perhaps you are hosting clients out-of-town), call ahead and speak with the maitre'd. Make it clear that you will be having an important business meal and picking up the check. Confirm the meal appointment with your clients the day before if you are meeting for breakfast or that day if you are having lunch or dinner. Things do happen and mix-ups occur. Arrive early so you can attend to last minute details. This is the perfect time to give your credit card to the maitre'd and avoid the awkwardness that seems to accompany the arrival of the bill. Take charge of the seating. Your guests should have the prime seats-the ones with the view. As the host, take the least desirable spot-the one facing the wall, the kitchen or the restrooms. Beyond being polite, where you seat your guests is strategic. When you are entertaining one client, sit next to each at a right angle rather than across the table. With two clients, put one across from you and the other to your side. If you sit between them, you will look as if you are watching a match at Wimbledon as you try to follow the conversation. Allow your guests to order first. You might suggest certain dishes to be helpful. By recommending specific items, you are indicating a price range. Order as many courses as your guests, no more and no less, to facilitate the flow of the meal. It is awkward if one of you orders an appetizer or dessert and the others do not. As the host, you are the one who decides when to start discussing business. That will depend on a number of factors such as the time of day and how well you know your clients. At breakfast, time is short so get down to business quickly. At lunch, wait until you have ordered so you won't be interrupted. Dinner, the more social occasion, is a time for rapport building. Limit the business talk and do it after the main course is completed. When you know your clients well, you have more of a basis for small talk. However, because you have established a business friendship, you can eliminate some of the chitchat when time is an issue. When you don't know your clients well, spend more time getting acquainted before launching your shoptalk. Sometimes you simply need to use your own judgment about when to get down to business, realizing that if you wait too long, your clients may start to wonder why they were invited. If you begin too early in the meal, your guests might suspect that you are more interested in their money than you are in them. Keep an eye on the time, but don't let your guests see you checking your watch. Breakfast should typically last an hour; lunch an hour and a half. Wrap up your business dinner in two to three hours, no more. Handle any disasters with grace. With all your attention to detail, things can still go wrong. The food may not be up to your standards, the waiter might be rude or the people at the next table boisterous and out of control. Whatever happens, make sure you are not the one to lose control. Excuse yourself to discuss any problems with the staff. Your guests will feel uncomfortable if you complain in front of or to them. Limit the amount of alcohol you drink at the business meal. The three Martini lunch is mostly a thing of the past. However, cocktails and wine are still part of the business dinner. Since alcohol can have the same effect as truth serum, keep your consumption to one or two glasses. When guests are drinking liberally and you sense trouble, excuse yourself and discreetly ask the server to hold back on refilling the wine glasses or offering another cocktail. Your conduct over the meal will determine your professional success. If you pay attention to the details and make every effort to see that your clients have a pleasant experience, they will assume that you will handle their business the same way. Before long you could have them eating out of your hand. (c) 2005, Lydia Ramsey. All rights in all media reserved. Lydia Ramsey is a business etiquette expert, professional speaker, corporate trainer and author of MANNERS THAT SELL - ADDING THE POLISH THAT BUILDS PROFITS. She has been quoted or featured in The New York Times, Investors' Business Daily, Entrepreneur, Inc., Real Simple and Woman's Day. For more information about her programs, products and services, e-mail her at lydia@mannersthatsell.com or visit her web site http://www.mannersthatsell.com.
MORE RESOURCES:
Sales - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Can Barter Help Increase Cash Sales and Visability for Your Small Business? Barter is becoming an increasingly popular method of commerce. The U. Selling for Beginners Speak to almost any self employed professional and most of them will say that they love their job but don't care much for selling their services. Here's some advice to help all those reluctant professionals who need to sell to clients. Packaging Maketh the Person The multi million pound cosmetics industry is acutely aware of the value of packaging. You'll know this if you've ever bought anything from those glamorous ladies whose counters are always just inside the front door of Department stores. People Buy People So Sell On Relationships (Objection handling tips excerpted from Objections! Objections! Objections!)People buy people. If everything else were equal wouldn't you buy from the person that you liked the best? Of course you would and so do your clients. Incentive Dilemma: Manufacturers and distributors are rolling out more sales incentive programs for their channel partners than ever before.Some of these programs are not as successful as they could be, however, because they fail to appreciate fully what motivates salespeople and drives them to overachieve. Getting Past the Gate Guard Over the years, many prospects have hidden behind their well-trained secretaries to prevent interruptions from persistent salespeople. But in today's electronic world, voice mail systems have frequently replaced the human gate guard. Give Up the Need to Sell Most business people will tell you that selling is not their favorite activity. Let's explore a way to look at the process of sales a bit more favorably. Dress as Though You Mean Business Could casual Friday be undermining your leadership ability?One of the cool things about working in a home office is that you can do business in torn jeans and a T-shirt because no one sees you but the dog. And Sparky believes in you no matter what you wear. How Many Ways Do You Have To Justify Your Price? If you were selling a mansion, and you were selling it for 25 cents, some wiseacre would inevitably respond, "It costs too much."When that happens, are you prepared?As an excercise, make a list of 20 "reasons why" your services are worth your fees. Selling the Difficult: How to Sell What People Dont Understand How to Buy I'll play a seller, using conventional selling methods, selling something difficult to understand; you be the prospective buyer. As we go through the process together, note your reactions, how your beliefs are being challenged, what 'objections' and emotions come up for you as I try to 'sell' you. Looong and Boooring Sales Letters You have all seen them,the sales letters that never ends. They go on and on about how this product can do this and that. The Trusted Advisor Relationship: What Is It, and What Should It Be? For the past months, maybe a year, I've been hearing sales groups talk about the need to become Trusted Advisors (I'll call them TAs). I suspect that the problems cropping up in the sales arena these days - the increased length of the sales cycle, the increased levels of competition - are leading sales management to base their initiatives on being of true service to prospects, as a way to seem different from the competition. The Secrets Behind Hypnotic Selling Hypnosis has been a taboo word for far too long. And many people see it in a mystical light. If I Wanted To Sell For A Living, I Would Of Majored In It In College By a show of hands, how many of you grew up as a kid saying to yourself, "I can't wait to grow up until I become a salesperson"?Why do people go into sales? Here are some reasons people have given to me and sales managers when they apply for a sales position:? I don't know what else to do in life, so I might as well sell.? I'm tired of my present job of (you fill in the blank), so I guess I'll go into sales; anybody can do it. Stuff We Make Up About Our Prospects ? Go through the "no's" to get to "yes." ? It takes X number of "no's" to get 1 "yes. How to create your own Unique Selling Proposition Why would a prospect buy from you rather than from your competitor?How do you outsell your competitors?Your unique selling proposition (USP) is very important as part of your business planning. This is especially so if you decide to set up a home business in the highly competitive internet arena. Leveraging Yourself Up To Executives When Selling The fastest way to get a decision made is to speak directly with the decision-maker, right? OK, so you knew that. Often times, the decision-makers are not easy to get to. Creating Intense Emotions That Motivate People Ever wish that your presentations could be as much fun as a cool TV commercial? Come late January every year network TV treats us to America's finest and most expensive commercials - Superbowl commercials. You may remember some of these even now, 2 weeks later. Three Ways to Get More Referrals When you are in the business of sales, among the many key ingredients to your success is receiving referrals from as many sources as possible.Wouldn't it be nice if every morning you walked into your office and had a referral sitting there waiting for you on your desk?Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, but here are few suggestions that should help steer some referrals your way. 7 Ways to Stop Selling & Start Building Relationships Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.I was inspired to write this article after a few coaching sessions with a client named Michael, who sells a technology solution.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
